Help with grammar?

Lopan999 · 9 Sep 2004

I know you can say
"taberu bekidesu"
"tabe nikui"
and
"tabete aru"
for: "I should eat"
"It's hard to eat"
and
"I have eaten"

but If I wanted to say
"I shouldn't eat"
"It's not hard to eat"
and
"I haven't eaten"
would I say:
"tabenai bekidesu"
"tabenai nikui"
"tabenai aru"
?

Elizabeth · 9 Sep 2004

Lopan999 said:
I know you can say
"taberu bekidesu"
"tabe nikui"
and
"tabete aru"
for: "I should eat"
"It's hard to eat"
and
"I have eaten"

but If I wanted to say
"I shouldn't eat"
"It's not hard to eat"
and
"I haven't eaten"
would I say:
"tabenai bekidesu"
"tabenai nikui"
"tabenai aru"
?

Taberu bekidewanai
Tabenikui dewanai
Tabete nai (or inai).

ax · 9 Sep 2004

well, it's grammar, not grammer dear....

ax

cacawate · 9 Sep 2004

I fail to see where the mistake was made...

PaulTB · 9 Sep 2004

cacawate said:
I fail to see where the mistake was made...

Could have been edited post reply. Edits made within ??? minutes don't get marked as such.

Elizabeth · 9 Sep 2004

PaulTB said:
Could have been edited post reply. Edits made within ??? minutes don't get marked as such.

そうですね。間違いを見落としませんでした。もう訂正されました。
ここのルールに理由はない方が多いと思います。

wakaP · 10 Sep 2004

Elizabeth said:
Tabenikui dewanai

It should be "Tabe nikuku nai" or "Tabe nikuku ha nai".

Buntaro · 10 Sep 2004

Waka-san!

I was going to say, "tabenikui ja nai". Is that wrong?

wakaP · 10 Sep 2004

こんにちわ、Buntaro-san.

Buntaro said:
Waka-san!
I was going to say, "tabenikui ja nai". Is that wrong?

Sorry, that is wrong...

nikui = hard, difficult
nikui is the base form and its 連用形 is nikuku.

So, nikui + nai would become "nikuku nai".
"ja" is a shorten form of "deha".
You cannot add "deha (ja)" after words ended "i", that is adjectives.
For example, It is not red.
--- "Akaku nai" is OK
--- "Akai deha(ja) nai" is wrong.

cacawate · 10 Sep 2004

Can you say Aka ja nai? And if so, does that mean you can nominalize all -i adjectives and do the same? I'm pretty sure you cannot, but if you could these would be correct, in theory:
Ao ja nai (Is not blue)
Yominiku ja nai (Not hard to read)
Paatii shita ja nai (To not want to party)
Waruku na ja nai (Not not bad)

If this is ignorant, I apologize. Just a quick unresearched question.

-Jeff

Buntaro · 10 Sep 2004

Dang! I was hoping it was a ~na adjective situation ending in "i", e.g., kirei na onna....

wakaP · 10 Sep 2004

Buntaro said:
Dang! I was hoping it was a ~na adjective situation ending in "i", e.g., kirei na onna....

"kirei na" is not "kirei + na", it is 連体形 of 形容動詞 "kireida".
The end of 形容詞 is "i", and the end of 形容動詞 is "da".
"kirei" is not 形容詞, but it is the stem of kireida.
base form kireida
the stem kirei
kirei daro
kirei dat[ta]
kirei de[nai] => 'kirei ja nai' is OK
kirei ni[naru]
kirei na[onna]
kirei nara

cacawate said:
Can you say Aka ja nai?

Yes, I can.

cacawate said:
And if so, does that mean you can nominalize all -i adjectives and do the same?

No, that doesn't. It's a coincidence.
In the case that the rest of the word would be a noun by removing the "i", your theory would work.

cacawate said:
I'm pretty sure you cannot,

You are right.

Glenn · 11 Sep 2004

About the tabenikui dewa nai, etc., it's possible in rhetorical questions. For example, this would mean something like, "hard to eat, isn't it/don't you think?" Also, I hear that a small percentage of people in Japan inflect the copula in polite adjectives, so some people say things like atarashii deshita. As far as I know, though, it hasn't become very popular (which follows the "small percentage" part ).

kdynamic · 11 Sep 2004

something like the following conversations are correct, right?

怖かった？
怖くはないけど、ちょっとびっくりしたの

or

赤いズボンはだめと言われたけど、これ赤くないじゃない？
ちょっと赤っぽいけど、多分大丈夫。

Both of those are examples, if they are correct, of using a negative somewhat like people above were suggesting, though not quite the same I guess.

wakaP · 11 Sep 2004

Glenn said:
About the tabenikui dewa nai, etc., it's possible in rhetorical questions.

そういうのだったら何でもpossibleですよ。
"easy to eat"は「食べにくい」ではない。
例えば，"XXXX" is wrong.のXXXの部分にはどのような
間違った文章も入れることができます。
僕の発言は"It's not hard to eat"についてですので，気をつけて下さいね。

さて"It's not hard to eat"から離れると，
Buntaroさんの"tabenikui ja nai"もこれだけじゃ間違いとは言えません。
（ラーメンを食べるのにスプーンを渡されて）「なにこれ，食べにくいじゃない」
というように「食べにくいじゃない」が正しい状況もあります。ただし，この意味は，as you know, "It's not hard to eat" ではありませんね。"It's hard to eat"です。

Glenn said:
Also, I hear that a small percentage of people in Japan inflect the copula in polite adjectives, so some people say things like atarashii deshita. As far as I know, though, it hasn't become very popular (which follows the "small percentage" part ).

形容詞を丁寧に言う，というのは悩ましいですね。なんか気持ち悪いんですよね。
「新しいです」は普通に言います。「新しいでした」は聞きませんね。
「新しかったです」「新しいものでした」というのが一般的だと思います。

Glenn · 13 Sep 2004

wakaP said:
形容詞を丁寧に言う，というのは悩ましいですね。なんか気持ち悪いんですよね。
「新しいです」は普通に言います。「新しいでした」は聞きませんね。
「新しかったです」「新しいものでした」というのが一般的だと思います。

Yeah, I'm no fan of it either, and in fact I was on that side of the argument against someone telling a beginning student of Japanese that it is correct, or that they should use it. But I saw a study that showed that something like 5% of the Japanese population says it. On a related note, I'm not really a fan of things like iku desu either.

wakaP · 14 Sep 2004

Glenn said:
But I saw a study that showed that something like 5% of the Japanese population says it.

Oh, really!? I don't want to believe it. でも最近の学力低下はほんとにひどいからなあ。。教育を大事にしない政府がバカなんです。

By the way, my wife and I sometimes say 「行くです」「するです」 in fun.

Help with grammar?

Lopan999

Junior Master

Elizabeth

先輩

ax

後輩

cacawate

観察するのが好きです

PaulTB

Manga Psychic

Elizabeth

先輩

wakaP

後輩

Buntaro

運動不足

wakaP

後輩

cacawate

観察するのが好きです

Buntaro

運動不足

wakaP

後輩

Glenn

一切皆苦

kdynamic

後輩

wakaP

後輩

Glenn

一切皆苦

wakaP

後輩

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